Holus Aims To Put A Holodeck On Your Tabletop

H+ Technology's Holus won't just make holograms, it will generate them from content you're using on traditional devices.

For years, members of The Escapist's Science & Tech team have asked a single question: When, exactly, can we get our Star Trek holodecks? Sadly, it turns out making convincing holograms is a lot harder than we thought, but maybe it's safer to start small. Like tabletop small. That's the principle behind H+ Technology's Holus - an interactive display that turns your 2D digital content into holograms. All you'd need to do is connect your computer or mobile device, and the Holus would extrapolate a 3D image that meets your needs.

At first glance, the Holus looks like an box with glass sides and some kind of pyramid inside, but it effectively acts like a holographic computer monitor. Once you connected a device using USB or HDMI ports, potentially any software can present three-dimensional displays that can be viewed from all sides. From a gaming perspective, the applications are pretty obvious - in fact, H+ already plans to support the Unity 5 and Unreal Engine 4 SDKs. The Holus also sounds well-suited to digital board games, which could be loaded with the push of a button.

But H+ wants the tech to go much further. There's a social angle that opens the Holus up for holographic teleconferencing, using 3D images of anyone you're speaking with. 3D printing technologies will also be supported by letting users preview models before creating physical copies. H+ also wants the Holus to be compatible with gesture and thought-based interfaces like Leap Motion or Emotiv, which should let you control the display without physically touching it.

It might sound like a holograhic pie-in-the-sky idea, but the Holus has been getting a fair amount of attention already. Early iterations are have won accolades from NextBC and the Vancouver User Experience Awards. Now H+ Techologies is looking to Kickstarter to complete the commercial version, and has already surpassed its $50,000 by a staggering 370 percent.

Whether the Holus will take off remains to be seen, but it may be a promising way to make hologram technology practical for end users - even if it's not the holodeck we imagined. Would you want a Holus in your home?